We stood outside the waiting room watching the light traffic in the lobby. The servicemen predominated over the civilians and men predominated over women. They all looked busy; they all looked important and most looked worried. Billy Spinoza came through the doorway. I suddenly realised that his was the first dark face I’d seen in the place. He was wearing a rollneck sweater and a checked jacket-tough guys don’t wear ties.
‘Ms Bell, Mr January, Cliff, shall we go?’
‘Have you got a car, Mr Spinoza?’ January said.
‘No, sir, not right now. Have to be careful with cars in my line of work.’ He steered us towards the door.
‘Why’s that?’ Trudi said.
‘It’s just another thing they can wire. Fact is, there hasn’t been a single bombing or bugging in a taxi cab yet. We appreciate that.’
It was dark outside but the afternoon warmth was lasting. Spinoza collared a cab that was dropping a much be-ribboned officer at the building and he ushered us into the back.
‘Where to, brother?’ the driver said. He was darker than Spinoza with a shiny bald head. The photograph of him above the sun visor must have been taken years before when he still had a fringe of grizzled grey hair.
‘The Strip, I guess. What would you folks like to eat?’
The driver flicked the meter on. ‘Creole?’
‘Yuk,’ Trudi said.
The driver smiled. ‘Chinese?’
‘How about Australian?’ I said.
‘Say what?’
Spinoza pulled at his tuft of beard. ‘We’ll eat Italian. The food’s okay but more to the point we’ll get good visibility.’
‘That again,’ Trudi said. ‘Tell me.’
We told her as we drove to Georgetown. She listened in silence, asked for my descriptions of the men in the car again and then sank back in the seat. ‘Prohibition’s over, isn’t it? Let’s get a drink.’
After the grey wasteland of the administrative buildings, putting foot on the Strip was like arriving on another planet. The neon and the traffic noise and the music seemed to blend into a roar of sound and light. We three Australians were edgy and tired and Spinoza was tense, but something about the place revived us. It wasn’t quite a good feeling; it was almost as though the world’s problems were too big and this was a place to come to forget them for a while, until they reached out and snuffed you.
Spinoza directed us through the streams of people on the pavement who were milling around briefly, forming groups and breaking up and staying compulsively on the move. Cars crawled along the street, parked, honked and were honked at, moved on. There was flow between the road and the pavement. I saw a man park almost in the middle of the road, walk to the kerb; hand his keys to another man and take up the conversation as his car was driven away. The road and pavement people were all of the same tribe.
The restaurant, which was named Dino’s or Mario’s or Luigi’s, had red and white tablecloths but they were striped not checked and the bottles in which the candles stood didn’t have wickerwork around them. Spinoza had a quiet word with the supervisor and a couple was moved away from a table in the corner. They were smiling and I watched as the cloth was changed on the table and they were re-settled. A bottle of wine arrived for them and was uncorked with a smile and a flourish. Then we sat down.
‘Okay?’ Spinoza said.
We were in a corner; no doors behind us or to the side, a clear view of the entrance, the serving door and the door that led to the conveniences. I could even see through a window into the small carpark at the side. ‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Double vodka,’ Trudi said to the drink waiter. ‘Scotch and ice to my right and beer for the gentlemen opposite.’
‘Mineral water,’ Spinoza said.
The waiter looked enquiringly at me. ‘Light beer,’ I said. ‘I love a compromise.’
January was rubbing his eyes and massaging the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
‘They say you shouldn’t eat when you’ve got jet lag, Peter,’ I said. ‘You should have a salad.’
‘I’ve never had jet lag in my life,’ January snarled. ‘I want osso bucco and a litre of red wine. God, I’m going to make them sorry for this.’
‘You’ll be sorry if you drink a litre of red wine here, sir,’ Spinoza said softly. ‘But what d’you mean, if I may ask. The threats…?’
‘No, I’m talking about that prick who thought I was a South African.’
The drinks arrived and Spinoza sipped his mineral water. ‘That is a considerable insult,’ he said. ‘Cliff, do you…?’
But I wasn’t listening; I wasn’t even drinking. I was looking out into the carpark and I knew what had disturbed me before but wouldn’t quite rise to the surface. The white Volvo with the red stripe I’d seen at our first stop had been in the carpark at the second stop and here it was again, pulling into a parking bay right outside.
16
I muttered the information to Spinoza as I got up from the table.
‘Could be a feint,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch the folks. Think you can handle it?’
I nodded. His signal to the restaurant supervisor must have meant ‘Give this man the moon’ because he leaned his ear up to my mouth and looked ready to clear the place if need be.
‘Quick way to the carpark?’ I said.
He didn’t waste time talking; his hand gripped my arm and he steered me past tables and out through the kitchen to a set of heavy perspex doors.
‘You can see it from here, buddy. We got a guy parks the cars.’
The Volvo owner was dark, heavy-set, with thin hair and a green face, but that was just the neon light above the building tinting him. He didn’t want his car parked by anyone. He wanted to leave it where it was. The car parker, a young black man wearing whites with a bow tie and a white cap, didn’t want him to do that but saw reason when Green Face gave him some money. I slipped out of the kitchen and ducked low behind the cars, moving forward to cut him off before he got to the door of the restaurant.
I got a quick look at the Volvo on the way-no one else in it. Green Face moved slowly; he was either furtive, hesitant or careful. He was built wide and strong; his suit was baggy and he wore scuffed suede shoes. He kept one hand in his pocket I took out the. 38, took four long steps and swung a kick in behind his right knee. His hands flew in the air, both empty and clawing at the wall for support. I hooked at his ankle and watched him fall.
He hit on his side and rolled over onto his back. I bent down and put the gun in front of his face where he could see it.
‘Stay there,’ I said, ‘and you won’t get hurt.’
His voice came out in a strangled whine with a lot of Australian vowels. ‘I am hurt!’
All that stuff about Americans ignoring muggings in the street is true; we were only feet away from the main throroughfare; several people stared at me as I bent over a fallen man threatening him with a gun, but no one stopped. You can’t count on it absolutely, though. The carpark attendant came out from behind a car with a gun bigger than mine in his hand.
‘Hold it there,’ he said.
‘You hold it.’ I eased back a little but remained businesslike. ‘This is official. It’s okay.’
‘The hell it’s official,’ the man on the ground said.
‘Have I touched your wallet? Am I trying to take your car keys? And if I wanted you to be dead that’s how you’d be.’ I was reasonably sure he wasn’t armed and not just because he spoke with an Australian accent. His jacket was open and he wore no harness; if he had a gun in his sock it’d be my own fault if I let him get it. I slid the safety to ‘on’ and put my gun away. ‘Would you please,’ I said to the attendant, ‘go inside and get a message to Mr Spinoza that everything’s all right. You can see that it is, can’t you?’
‘I guess so.’ He uncocked the big gun.